OpenAI’s Ghibli-style AI art goes viral, prompting copyright concerns and commentary from CEO Sam Altman amid growing legal questions.
What started as a viral moment quickly turned into a legal and ethical headache. OpenAI’s latest image generation tool gave users the ability to create pictures in the instantly recognizable style of Studio Ghibli — and the internet wasted no time jumping on the trend.
From Ghibli-fied versions of Elon Musk and Gandalf to fantasy landscapes full of floating lanterns and fuzzy creatures, social media was flooded with AI-generated art. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman got in on the fun, switching his profile picture to a Ghibli-style rendering of himself.
But the good vibes didn’t last long.
Artistic Fun or Legal Grey Zone?
The AI art sparked immediate questions around copyright — namely, is it okay for an AI to mimic the visual style of a beloved animation studio?
Evan Brown, an intellectual property attorney at Neal & McDevitt, says the style itself isn’t technically protected. But he told TechCrunch that if OpenAI trained its models on actual Studio Ghibli frames, that could raise some serious copyright flags. The core concern: how much of the original work was used to train the AI, and was it done with permission?
OpenAI’s Position: It’s Not Copying, It’s Inspiration
OpenAI, for its part, says its systems avoid replicating the work of individual living artists. Instead, the tool allows for the generation of images in the "style of" broader studios or genres. That still raises eyebrows, given that Studio Ghibli’s signature aesthetic is largely tied to the vision of living legend Hayao Miyazaki.
This nuance — style vs. substance — is where the debate gets tricky.
Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman got in on the debate, switching his profile picture to a Ghibli-style rendering of himself.
Altman later posted about the experience on X (formerly Twitter), writing:
This isn’t the first time generative AI has walked into murky territory. Writers and creators have increasingly voiced concern about their work being scraped to train AI without consent. In fact, "Andor" creator Tony Gilroy said he deliberately chose not to publish his scripts online to avoid them becoming AI training fodder.
So while the Ghibli trend may have looked like harmless fun, it’s also a flashpoint in a much bigger discussion about how AI intersects with intellectual property — and whether the law is keeping up.
As generative tools become more advanced, the question isn’t just what AI can do. It’s what it should do.
